COMPARISON OF NUT CHARACTERISTICS BETWEEN KOREAN NATIVE CHESTNUT ACCESSIONS AND PREVAILING CULTIVARS CULTIVATED IN KOREA

Korean native chestnut has been considered as an intermediate (C. crenata var. dulcis Nakai, C. bungeana Blume) between Japanese chestnut and Chinese chestnut in morphological characteristics and nut traits. To conserve the excellent genetic resources of Korean native chestnut and to establish breeding population for releasing new cultivars, 44 trees were selected for the prospective genotypes. From the result of nut traits evaluation, 13 of 44 Korean native chestnut accessions investigated were above 14 g in nut weight (average 15.9 g) and superior to non-selected Korean native chestnut (9.4 g). 5 accessions were finally selected for good nut quality, which were below 5% in percent of polyembryonic nuts and percent with the pericarp split related to marketability respectively, and above 15 g in nut weight. These accessions were smaller in nut size, but higher in soluble solid content, kernel hardness and facility of peeling than currently prevailing cultivars derived from Japanese chestnut. These results indicate that Korean native chestnut accessions can be used as good breeding materials to develop new cultivars suitable for fresh and roasted chestnut.